Parenting is a Zero Sum Game

Functional couples are not entirely interdependent, just as a couple of ballroom dancers must, except during lifts and other daring maneuvers, be able to stand on their own two feet. This means that a functional couple must have many activities they do on their own or with other people. Sure, when you first fall in love, you have a tendency to put your friendships and work on the back burner. But if you try to stay like that, your relationship will become a death match instead of a life match.

Of course you’re still disappointed when you have a date planned or a meal made and your spouse cancels for a work obligation. But it’s a different kind of disappointment if you feel that nothing except your spouse can engage you. And, indeed, in healthy couples, when one spouse is busy, the other has plenty to do. As long as these activities do not threaten the relationship, all is well. (By activities that “threaten the relationship,” I mean hanging out with that person who hates your spouse, who encourages you to violate your couple-held values, or for whom you harbor sexual feelings.)

So all is well in the vast majority of couples if one member wants to hang with friends, go camping with old college buddies, or stay home and read a book. The other spouse has similar enticements. Couples vary in the amount of time they spend together, but successful couples don’t treat the time apart as imprisonment, abandonment, or limbo.

And then you have a child.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m glad I had children and never regretted the decision, even though I immediately started calling childless couples “single” and my own child “the old ball and chain.” As every parent knows, it’s hard time, and like any prison you can make it worse by constantly thinking of escape rather than finding ways to enjoy it and making it meaningful.

Still, once you have a child, your marriage becomes a zero sum game. Because the little buggers have to be watched, everything you take for yourself you take from your spouse. I suppose if you have enough money, you can hire someone to watch the kids, but in excess, that’s even worse, because then what you take for yourself you take from your children.

This fact alone accounts for many divorces. “We still love each other but we don’t love you”? That’s not what I mean. Instead, I mean that your spouse becomes a competitor rather than a collaborator. It can be a strange kind of fun to play dishwasher chicken, where each spouse dares the other to let the dishes pile up. But it’s not fun at all if it’s at the children’s expense, under which circumstances people cave quickly and resentment piles up. Under the rules of a zero sum game, it doesn’t take long for the children to seem like booby prizes and for your spouse to seem exploitive.

A good solution to this problem would be one that restores your relationship to your spouse as collaborative and to your child as parental. In other words, it just won’t do to add up the amount of time each parent is spending with the child and make sure that these even out. It won’t do because that method of equalizing parenting time maintains and exacerbates the definitions of the child as a chore and the spouse as a competitor. Instead, openly discuss how you can meet each other’s needs and how each parent can enjoy parenting time more. (The prospect of escape often leads parents to accept parenting time as a duty rather than as a potential source of fun.) Mourn the general loss of spontaneity that a child brings without giving up all hope of it on occasion. Mainly, though, the best approach is to recognize that many of your spousal interactions have changed from win-win to win-lose, and see where that brings you.

I viewed my years with young children as a chance to become a child again myself, enjoying trips to the playground, dance and gymnastics lessons and recitals, Little League baseball and rec league basketball and soccer games, swim meets, board games, cartoons, Disney movies, games of hide and seek or playground basketball and trips to science museums or amusement parks. I guess I "missed out" on going out for cocktails or fancy dinners or more adult movies but I tried to take an attitude of "been there, done that."

Now my kids are college age and I enjoy healthy relationships with both of them. Would I have these two wonderful friends to enjoy if I had viewed them as a "ball and chain" when they were little and needed me? Perhaps, but I doubt it. And one thing I know for sure: my own life would have been been much poorer for it.

I have two, both are great kids and I enjoy my time with them. From taking them to their activities to just hanging out with them, to taking vacations with them, my husband and I wouldn't trade our parenting experiences for anything.

It's not really clear from DroneDad's comment that he understands what "zero sum game" means. From his description of the activities he did with his kids when they were young, and the fact that he used having kids to be a child again himself, I'm left wondering who did the often thankless, mature tasks of parenting during those years.

Things like walking the floor with a crying baby, changing leaky poopy diapers, sleepless nights with babies and sick kids, leaving a sobbing child at pre-school or day care, comforting a kid who has been snubbed by a friend or thinks he's stupid because he still cant remember his multiplication tables, waiting up for a teen on a date, setting appropriate limits for bad behavior, enforcing that homework comes before fun activities, being the bad guy parent by turning off the TV, serving real food with vegetables for dinner, saying 'no' when it's hard but necessary.

Raising children, if you are doing more than going to playgrounds, museums, vacations and their sports activities, is such an all encompassing commitment that it is, in a way, a ball and chain. It's all worthwhile, but it can be exhausting and leave you with little or no time for yourself when your kids are young. Especially if the parents are competing for precious down time. Or one parent thinks that going to a ball game and a museum is all parenting is about. That's what it's like to be an aunt or an uncle, not a parent.

DroneDads post made me think of a Dr Seuss quote that my teenagers introduced me to: "In my world everyone is a pony and they all eat rainbows and poop butterflies."

DroneDad's reply ignores the point of the blog post in order to promote his own purportedly straightforward warm, loving, uncomplicated (and suspiciously self-laudatory) feelings about having a child. To me, it seems that to be a responsible adult precludes regressing to childhood oneself. Surely, an adult, responsible parent can feel bound (as if to a "ball and chain") by responsibilities while still being playful (and while putting the child's health and wellbeing first). Does DroneDad just mean to assert that he, personally, is a terrific, fun-loving and childlike father, in contrast to the blogger (who, I daresay, is somewhat more honest about the spectrum of human feelings that one can experience: not only those that paint a pretty picture)? Since apparently we're talking about ourselves now, I personally would rather be the kid of a dad who cheerfully refers to me, with affection, as the "ball and chain" as opposed to one who won't acknowledge a wide range of feelings, attitudes & behaviors that can still add up to "good dad." The latter seems way more likely to be mean to me when his inevitable aggression expresses itself and makes him feel like a bad person.